Trade war

While we all know open trade is best for all trading partners I find it starnge to hear the media backlash at our government finally standing up to the unfair trade practices by foreign countries that we have tolerated to the tune of billions of dollars of US wealth being exported in the form of trade deficit. Especially at a time when we supposedly have no inflation and the average american worker hardly makes any money.

The Chinese have excluded our banks and insurance companies or limited them with restrictions, Japanese wont’ allow many US Agricultural products, EU same. It seems they should open their markets to the USA as we have opened ours.

Thoughts on this bold outlier statement?

The media backlash isn’t strange if you understand their motivation. Check out the complete works of Turd Fergeson on this fine forum and get woke to reality.

Understood, but it’s actually not strange at all why media has reacted this way…

“The media” are eight tickers in the S&P500 which control 90% of all media (CMCSA, DIS, TWX, FOXA, CBS, VIAB, NWSA, NYT). Corporations are programed by law to maximize short-term profit. That is exactly what they have been doing—using their assets to promote selling out the long-term interests of the country -> for short-term gain -> which maximizes SPX return -> and thus their return. It’s perfectly logical. Globalism is just one strategy of corporatism, but currently their most important, so of course they are going to defend it.

Corporations don’t care the avg worker has no money, that’s the point—to suck up all the wealth from the population and government.

This was the big error. Reagan kicked-off globalism, profits/GDP soared, and the tradegap/deficit widened. It was the US’ decision to do that. Other countries have sovereignty too, and they made their own decisions (see CN). The US never negotiated with CN, “we will open if you do too.” Now they cry about their own stupid corporate short-term decision making, and CN’s wise long-term decision making.

What we are seeing are normal functional free markets, survival of the fittest.

The US applies a similar level of tariffs and restrictions to trade from Canada, the EU and Japan as they do towards it. Of course, barriers could be reduced on both sides, but Trump clearly doesn’t want that. Otherwise, why would he have cut off trade talks with the EU and Japan upon entering office and put up new tariffs on Canada of all places?

There is no coherent plan coming from the White House. What does the Trump administration want? Smaller bilateral trade deficits? Is that necessarily a good thing in all cases (no!)? So what is this really about? This is 99% politics and maybe 1% economics. Trump doesn’t have enough economics knowledge to pass CFA level 1 and he doesn’t listen to the advice of experts in the field. Any field for that matter.

Using WTO’s MFN Trade weighted tariffs nearly all of our trading partners put substantially higher tariffs on our goods… If you knew anything about Chinese trade and Made in China 2025, you wouldn’t make such an idiotic statement. Autos are our largest deficit factor in the trade balance with the EU, is 12.5% the same as 2.5%? Talks were cut off because if you were following them, they were meaningless. Tariffs on Canada are part of NAFTA negotiations and to stop transhipment of steel attempting to circumvent the tariffs. NAFTA hasn’t been renegotiated since the mid-90’s which is ridiculously lazy of our government given the shifts in the economy that have occurred since then.

PA has this one right. Media is being driven by corporate interests which are booming at the expense of US labor.

Buff & BS you are quite correct. The US has substantially lower tariffs and fewer other barriers than most of other countries we trade with. One of the primary reasons behind opening our markets was to gain more allies to stop the Soviet Union. That threat really isn’t there anymore and so barriers should come down. I don’t like Trump and can’t say I really agree with his approach; however, he is taking a stance that is long overdue.

JPM call today: “It’s not just policy driven by seemingly random tweets, if you actually look at what’s being said and the trade policy actions, it’s actually a quite rational policy that’s going on.”

That’s what I called—DC can’t act if it doesn’t have corporate America approval. So either DC sold SPX on the idea as a way to maximize profits, or more likely after about a year of think tanks SPX came up with a way they can use Trump to maximize profits. Either way it probably won’t be good for the masses (SPX and society interest are misaligned).

the eu just fined google 5 billion dollars. lol thats bigger bs than a tariff. its time to check these people hard and tariff their asses. if they are going after are crowned jewel who’ll withstand whatever they throw at it. lets take away their more marginal business likes steel and autos and send their businesse to the grave.

i find it really hilarious that germany is in control of that area again. these guys just keep coming back. lol